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With nearly 70% of India's population living in rural areas, India's future hinges on rural development and the agriculture sector. The importance of this theme is reflected in the extensive work that NCAER has undertaken in this area.

Tarujyoti Buragohain is an Associate Fellow at NCAER., Her research interests include infrastructure and energy issues. She has written several project reports for the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, the Ministry of Tribal Affairs and the Ministry of Human Research Development. She has been a member of the Advisory Committee for Monitoring and Evaluation of Solar Photovoltaics in the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, a member of the Research Advisory Committee on Tribal Development Research in the Ministry of Tribal Affairs and is a life member of Bhartiya Arthik Shodh Sansthan and the Input–Output Research Association.

Rajesh Chadha is a Professor & Research Director NCAER. He heads the research at NCAER. He has worked extensively on regional and multilateral issues pertaining to international trade. His other areas of interest include foreign direct investment and agricultural markets. He has provided research support to the Indian Government on multiple projects. He has also played a key role in the research projects sponsored by the Governments of India, Australia, and the UK, and various international organisations.

He is the Managing Editor of Margin: The Journal of Applied Economic Research, NCAER’s international, peer-reviewed journal, and a Member of the editorial board of Vision, the Journal of the Management Development Institute, Gurugram. He has also been a Visiting Scholar at the Universities of Michigan, Melbourne, and Monash, and Visiting Faculty at many prestigious academic and research institutes in India. He was nominated as GTAP Research Fellow (2004-2007) by the Global Trade Analysis Project, Purdue University, USA.

He received his PhD in Economics from the Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi.

Ruchi Jain is a Senior Research Analyst at NCAER with a background in Population Studies. Her areas of research interest are maternal and child health, reproductive and sexual health, migration and rural development. At NCAER, she has worked on various projects like IDRC, HDPI and Rural Housing. She holds a doctorate degree in population studies from the International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS), Mumbai. Her thesis focused on the risky behaviours of the single migrant women in Delhi. She was a recipient of the UGC-NET fellowship for her PhD at IIPS.

Sisira Jayasuriya is the Director, Centre for Development Economics and Sustainability, and Professor of Economics at Monash University. He is also an Adjunct Professor at the Arndt-Corden Department of Economics at the Australian National University, and Guest Professor, Institute of Social and Economic Research, Osaka University and held previous appointments at La Trobe University, Melbourne University, Australian National University and the International Rice Research Institute, Philippines. Professor Jayasuriya’s research covers a range of areas in policy-oriented development economics, and he has published extensively on trade, macroeconomics, food, agriculture and environmental issues of developing countries, with a primary focus on Asia. He has also been a consultant to major international agencies and several governments.

Laxmi Joshi is a Fellow at NCAER with research interests in agriculture and rural development. She has worked on issues related to the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, economic benefits of weather and marine services, air pollution issues in agriculture, India’s cotton revolution, and the national policy for farmers. Before NCAER, she worked at the National Commission on Farmers and the National Centre for Agricultural Economics and Policy Research.